


Filibuster

by De_Nugis



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-05-07
Updated: 2010-05-07
Packaged: 2017-10-17 01:40:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,143
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/171591
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/De_Nugis/pseuds/De_Nugis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam gets an inhibition-destroying truth curse for his birthday.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Filibuster

**Author's Note:**

> written for the Sam's birthday commentfic meme at [](http://community.livejournal.com/ohsam/profile)[ **ohsam**](http://community.livejournal.com/ohsam/)  . Prompt from [](http://whatjuliewrites.livejournal.com/profile)[ **whatjuliewrites**](http://whatjuliewrites.livejournal.com/)  "a witch the boys meet on a case decides to cast a spell on Sam as a gift for his birthday (she notices they have some communication hang ups)  -- he will not be able to inhibit what he says for a full day.  Basically everything he thinks and feels comes spewing out of his mouth without his control.  Including many thoughts of self-loathing and doubting Dean could ever love him the same after all that's happened, any other things you want, etc.  Sam is mortified and feels exposed and stupid."

He should have fucking killed her. Not just because she was into some serious Satanist shit – that was why they’d tracked her down, looking for ways to summon and hold the devil, hold him long enough to trap him, preferably ways that did not involve using his dumbass suicidal brother as Lucifer-bait – but for what she’d done to Sam. To them. Her fucking birthday gift. After Ellicot and the siren, it wasn’t like they needed any _more_ proof that evil supernatural influences are pretty lousy psychotherapy.

Sam is hunched in the backseat – “Don’t look at me,” he’d been screaming, “I can’t bear you looking at me,” and he’d refused to sit shotgun – and Dean is trying to track the constant slur of his speech without letting himself process it. “Always had to be me, always had to be me, and you know what’s ironic, Dean? I used to be so afraid that it would just take me over, that I’d wake up one day and I wouldn’t even be me anymore and I’d never even know it had happened, and then when the time came it wasn’t even like that, I went in with my eyes open, I chose every step of the way, and it wasn’t anything else making me evil, it was me, God, no wonder you hate me, you were always so sure that I’d resist whatever was going to change me, you never thought I’d just turn myself, God, forty years in hell for me, you should get a goddamned refund, all that destiny and why did they even bother when I was just going to ruin everything on my own, talk about fucking free will . . . ”

The witch had been pissed, all right, when they’d confiscated her books and knocked down her altar and blackmailed her into telling them what she knew, which, damn it, didn’t turn out to include what they needed to know. And maybe they’d been a bit short with each other, another damned dead end, and when Sam had been about to pipe up with one more stupid, self-sacrificing suggestion – Dean could tell, he could tell just what Sam was going to say, that mulish look on his face -- Dean had shut him down pretty quick. And Sam had closed his mouth and turned away, his lips a flat, angry line and a flush in his cheeks, and the witch had smiled at him, like he was something to eat. “Sweeties, you just need to talk it out, don’t you” she’d said, all sugar and poison, and then “But only one of you is the birthday boy, so only one of you gets the gift.” Then she’d refused to say any more, and they weren’t going to torture her or kill her, she was still human, sorry excuse for humanity though she might be, so in the end they’d left her tied to her chair and driven away. And then it was 12:00 AM, May 2nd, and Sam had started to talk.

At first they’d tried a gag, but Sam just went on mumbling around it, choking when he couldn’t get the words out, until the corners of his mouth were raw and bloody and Dean was terrified his brother was going to suffocate on his own words. Then they’d stopped at a drugstore, and Dean had rushed in and bought the first pair of earplugs he could find -- because he couldn’t listen to this, Christ, he wasn’t meant to hear it, not like this, maybe the bloody sadistic witch was right and Sam needed to talk and he needed to listen, but this, this was like saying that because someone needed to get laid they should get raped – but Sam’s hand had shot out and fastened painfully on his wrist when he moved to put the earplugs in, and his eyes had been full of panic, and for a moment he was actually seeing his brother through his hellish monologue: “Dean. What if I say Yes?”

“Sam, what?” he’d said, and Sam had been leaning earnestly forward over the seat and the words were spilling out again, tripping over each other, but he was still talking to the Dean in front of him, not that angry Dean in his head. “I know I’ve thought about it, God knows we both have, and if just thinking about it was consent we’d both have been meatsuits months ago, or, wait, maybe it is consent and we’re actually fucking archangels, we just haven’t noticed, that would be pretty funny, wouldn’t it, but if just thinking it isn’t enough, what if I say it, what if it just crosses my mind and I blurt it out with everything else and boom, just like that, it’s over, you have to listen to me, Dean, you have to listen to everything I say, you have to be there and if I say yes you have to say yes too, you were right, there in the panic room, no one else can stop me, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, it has to be you.” And then he’d hunched back in the seat with his head in his hands, just mumbling “Sorry, sorry, sorry,” over and over, his fingers so tight in his hair that Dean could see a tiny beading of blood at the roots.

So now Dean is on some kind of confessional suicide watch, not to prevent anything, because what the hell could he do to prevent it if it happened, but to witness and then throw himself away after Sam and become something that can kill his brother before Lucifer can settle comfortably into his custom-designed, deluxe vessel and destroy the world. Sam’s voice is getting hoarse, he’s been talking non-stop for six hours now, he can sip water, and Dean keeps passing him the bottle, and then there’s maybe fifteen seconds of silence and the sound of swallowing, and the words spurt out again, like blood from an artery, except blood runs out eventually and the words never do. Dean’s eyes are aching and gritty, his head pounding, he can’t keep driving and listening, they have to stop, and he pulls in at the next motel, a dismal place with a buzzing florescent sign missing half its letters and a nervous clerk who clearly only gives them a room because refusing a leather-coated lunatic with red-rimmed eyes accompanied by a mumbling, catatonic giant ranks high on the list of _Stupid Things: Don’t Do Them_ in some sleazy motel worker’s handbook.

Dean manages to get Sam into the room, and Sam starts pacing back and forth in the narrow strip of floor between the beds and the furniture bolted to the walls, talking, like he’d become some fancy ass lawyer after all and he’s walking up and down orating in front of a rapt courtroom. Except he doesn’t look like a fancy ass lawyer. He looks broken, and if there’s a courtroom in Sam’s head he’s maybe the prosecutor but he’s also the prisoner in the dock. As far as Dean can tell he’s talking to Jessica now, “Typical Freudian move, girlfriend just like my dead mother, beautiful and blonde and, oh yes, manipulated by demons and burned and murdered, never had my crusts cut off, but you baked me cookies, didn’t you, Jess, I even ate one of them, before you bled on it, guess the rest of them got burned . . .” And suddenly Dean can’t stand it any more, and he steps in front of Sam and grabs his arms and shakes him a bit and he’s shouting, “What am I supposed to do with this shit, Sammy, what am I supposed to do for you, I’m floundering here.” And for a second Sam actually stops talking. He looks kind of poleaxed, and he sits down on the end of one of the beds, and when his voice picks up again a moment later he’s talking about flounders.

He tells Dean about how flounders start out with eyes both sides of their head, like normal fish, and then one eye actually migrates to the other side, so they can lie flat on the mud with both eyes on the top of their body and look around at whatever murky scenery the ocean floor has to offer. Dean’s so fucking relieved he nearly says “Freaky,” but if Sam is playing word association that’s not a word he wants to throw in there, though, really, the fact that Sam can dredge up flatfish trivia from the depths of his subconscious is possibly more disturbing than whatever dark emotional stuff he’s deflecting.

And after that it’s better. Dean keeps feeding Sam prompts, and sometimes they still go to some pretty dark places, but it’s amazing how much Monty Python Sam can recite from memory once he gets started, and Dean actually enjoys the detailed literary analysis of all seven seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, complete with caustic notes on the actual market value of Buffy’s supposedly stylish yet affordable boots, and trust Sam to take a thrilling tale of saving people, hunting things and turn it into a meditation on the economics of women’s footwear. And it occurs to Dean, listening to his brother’s voice, and wincing a little at the painful rasp in it, that it really has been a long time since they talked, not just since Sam’s opened up about any of the monumental shit storm he’s been caught in since before he was even born, but since he stopped volunteering fun fish facts or getting Dean into technical debates on the feasibility of slaying the undead while wearing three inch heels.

The day is getting on, and neither of them has slept or eaten, and Sam’s voice is wearing out more and more till it’s nothing but a wrecked whisper, and he can’t seem to hold onto the threads Dean is feeding him any more, but he can’t sleep, and he can’t stop talking. His hands are shaking now when he tries to drink and the water spills down his shirt, and he’s on about Lucifer again, “You said it yourself Dean, I’ll say yes, it’s going to happen, I don’t know how, it’s me, I always fuck up, I’ll say yes.” And when Dean says, “No, Sam, you’ll say no, you’ve been saying no, I trust you, you’ll say no,” Sam just falls back onto the bed and lies there like he’s sleeping, or dead, except that his lips are still moving constantly, though there’s hardly a sound any more, but when Dean leans down to listen he can just hear the endless, ragged litany of “No, no, no, no, no,” and that’s it, that’s the only word Sam has left, for hours, till finally the clock flips over and its 12:00 AM, May 3.

The next day Sam doesn’t talk. He’s sitting shotgun again, but he’s staring out the window and he won’t even look at Dean, won’t meet his eyes or do more than shape “Thanks,” with his lips when Dean brings him tea with honey, and soup and cough drops and a milkshake in the middle of the afternoon, because Sam can’t eat anything solid and he’s got this dry, wheezing cough that probably hurts him even more than it hurts to hear. His shoulders are hunched and Dean can hear shame and misery and a constant undercurrent of apology, as clearly as if Sam’s endless monologue were still in his ears. They stop pretty early, and Dean goes out to get food, more soup, and then he sees a Baskin Robbins.

They don’t have any flounder-shaped ice cream cakes, and Dean thinks maybe now is not the time for the pink Disney princess, but he gets one shaped like a whale, since Sam’s into marine life, and brings it back to the motel room. Sam actually looks up when Dean sets it down on the table, and he rasps “Dude, ice cream cake for dinner?” “Yeah, well, it’s the Apocalypse, eat dessert first,” says Dean, and then, “your throat hurts and you kind of missed your birthday yesterday.” Sam’s staring at him, and Dean adds “I tried to get them to write ‘You’re not evil and I don’t hate you,’ on the cake, but they looked at me funny,” and yeah, if he had, they probably would have. Sam’s still staring at him, and maybe at some point they need to talk, really talk, but Sam’s in no shape for it now, and they are going to eat ice cream cake and then have soup for dessert and then maybe there will be something with vampires on television and they can have an aimless conversation about how much cooler their lives would be if they really could dust things into special effects with a pointed stick.


End file.
